


Two

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:16:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2518838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's an AU prompt from grelca--write an au where Danny never got divorced and he doesn’t realize how miserable his marriage is until he meets Mindy and there’s a spark with her he’s never had with Christina.</p><p>Title from Ryan Adams' Two--"If I could, I’d treat you like you want me to"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grelca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grelca/gifts).



> This is the start of it; I am thinking that it will be two or three chapters total. I wanted it to be finished this weekend, but alas, it is not, so it's going on the installment plan. 
> 
> Grelca has promised to pretend to like it, so please, everyone follow this lead. haha

Danny has been home from his last c-section of a very full day, for at least an hour, waiting on Christina to return from her errands. Danny is used to waiting for his wife, because she decided early on in his residency that if she had to be at the beck and call of every gestating woman in Manhattan, he could go by her schedule on his off time. He doesn’t mind the waiting, because he likes the quiet, and not having to relive every moment of his day. They’ve been married for five years, and everyone always comments on how much Christina and Danny complement each other.

To Danny, Christina is the personification of a woodland nymph out of a fairy tale, and he can’t pretend that he doesn’t regularly admire her lithe body, from her plum-like breasts to the hollows of her neck, to the concavity of her belly and the way her pelvic bones jut out under the waist band of her jeans. He likes how she takes care of herself, but not obsessively, and how it seems important to her that she look good, maybe a little bit for him. It might be old fashioned, but he likes that his wife cares what he thinks. Most of the time.

Danny’s hungry, and getting sleepier by the minute, but Christina enters just as he is about to give up and go to bed, “What do you think?” She stands between him and the episode of NOVA that was lulling him into a sense of complacency.

“You cut your hair.” He stops short of saying how much he hates it, but he really, really doesn’t like it. The cut makes her face seem so much more angular and sharp. It makes it seem that his woodland sprite is growing fangs.

“It’s never a good sign when someone states the action that you just took instead of their opinion of said action, Danny.” She grazes his temple with her lips, and removes the remote control from his hand. She smells of nutmeg and something acidic, like she’s been sucking on lemons. “You don’t like it.”

“It’s different.” He swallows thickly, almost giving away his position. Tactical maneuvers require deployment and he’s about to get ambushed. “You look beautiful. It’s just, erm, different.” It amazes Danny how he can be married to Christina for as long as he has and still be completely terrified of her. He doesn’t know how people ever get comfortable; he’s never been.

She narrows her eyes at him, just slightly, but enough for him to know that he needs to change course. “Danny.”

“It’s nice, Christina. I was taken by-- you surprised me. You didn’t tell me you were cutting it.”

“I have to ask your permission now?”

“No, of course not.” _Oh God. This is only getting worse_. Sometimes marriage is exactly quick sand. He reaches for her, closing both the space between them and, hopefully, the new haircut inspired tension. “Are you going on another assignment?” She usually only gives herself drastic haircuts when she’s traveling, or about to travel; to avoid being objectified by men, like he is apparently prone to do.

“Three weeks in Thailand, starting Wednesday.” She allows him the time to kiss her, and she pauses briefly to make him feel like it was a gift. 

She begins stalking around the apartment, idly putting things back into place (hard to do when her husband has *just* a tinge of OCD), perusing the mail, and generally seeming displeased. Danny isn’t sure if he should go on the offensive or the defensive, but he seriously considers just taking off out the front door in his pajamas in order to avoid whatever argument might come next. Sometimes he thinks that there is something about his face that incites a certain kind of rage in Christina, and if he can disappear the face, he can disappear the anger.

It almost never works. But sometimes, miraculously, it does. (Once, after his mother said something Christina didn't like, Danny stayed gone for a few hours, and when he came home, Christina had cooked him a large meal and cried that she only wanted his mother to love her.  He isn't sure what it says that his absence actually encourages her to soften.)

“Thailand, wow. That sounds really, really great.” He knows he is talking at too high of a volume, but he’s on edge, and so is she. He is Making An Effort, all capital letters, because that is what he’s supposed to do. Sometimes it would be nice if Christina would, but maybe she’s just mastered the art of never compromising her own personal happiness, and he’s lagging behind. _Catch up, Castellano._

“It is going to be amazing. And I have so much to do to get ready for it.” She says, as if a warning. Danny crosses to her, and pulls her to him, her shoulders tenser than the line of her lips. He kisses down her neck, to her collar bone, trailing into her décolletage. She doesn’t relax, but she doesn’t push him away either. Danny feels Christina’s hands twisting in his hair, lifting his face back up to hers. “Will you miss me?”

His eyes flick to her breasts, and back up to her face, where her icy blue eyes are peering at him, expectantly. She almost looks like the girl he followed home from the terrible pizza place, even with the too short hair and the new, strange angles. “Of course, babe.”

She hasn’t stopped leaving since they got married. Every few weeks, every few months, every few minutes, she leaves again. Maybe this time she’ll actually come back.

* * *

Dr. Shulman hires a new associate, an Indian woman that graduated Princeton, and throughout the interview process Shulman continuously refers to the new doctor as “magical and special.” Danny half expects a unicorn or a sorceress in long, flowing robes to prance through the doors of the office.

He is pleasantly surprised to find that Mindy Lahiri is not horse faced in the least, and the majority of her hem lines are mid to upper thigh, leaving not as much to the imagination as a flowing robe. At first impression, she seems only mildly annoying. Her voice is high, as in, only certain people and most breeds of dogs hear her, but her smile is infectious. From afar, she seems like she has half an ounce of medical knowledge and common sense, which is all Danny can really ask for, considering the other partners in the practice.

Dr.Shulman introduces her at a staff meeting and she waves like she’s riding in the back of a convertible in a parade. Dr. Shulman presents him to his new colleague as "renowned office grump, Danny Castellano," and she giggles. It only bothers Danny a little.

Three weeks into her tenure, she has already planned two office birthday parties and a Girl’s Night Out with the receptionists. According to office scuttlebutt and Danny's keen eavesdropping skills, she had apparently _not_ had sex in the hot pipe room with Jeremy Reed, who could literally not keep his dick in his pants if he was paid cash money to do so (He was, in fact. In a settlement with a previous resident at St. Brendan’s. Danny pretends not to be jealous, but being that he’s Italian, and human, he is utterly and completely green with envy, pretty much at all times, when it comes to the male-whoring ways of Dr. Jeremy Reed. Stupid English accent.)

Danny contemplates his bowl of shredded wheat in the break room when Mindy suddenly materializes next to him and directly in his face, “Are those your actual lips?”

“Excuse me?” They’ve spoken in spits and spurts before, but Danny has mostly stared at the floor in Mindy’s presence, for some reason. Something about Christina being out of town makes him more of a loner than usual, rather than less, as if it is what he deserves to be alone and he doesn’t want to upset the balance.

“Your lips. Are those factory issue?”

“I’m sorry? Are you asking me if my lips are real? Or if they belong to someone else?” Danny licks them self consciously. Mindy is pretty, with long, shiny black hair and giant, wide brown eyes. She wears make-up, but not too much. She’s curvy, and she knows it, so she dresses to flaunt the curves, not mask them. An unfamiliar warmth is beginning to climb up the back of Danny’s neck. Mindy is still staring, with intent, at his mouth.

“They are just really…impressive. Not many guys can pull those off.” She smiles, and reaches to touch his chin, turning his face so that she can examine them from another angle.

Danny shakes free, “Um, thanks. I find them to be highly functional. For the eating, and the talking, and the…” He trails off, dumbfounded. He doesn’t really know how to respond to a woman who isn’t his wife, talking about parts of his body and touching him simultaneously. It feels like he's violating some marriage code. “So, are you getting along all right here?”

She launches into a long dissertation on her patient roster, and the on-call rotation, and then begins to talk about a Rachel McAdams movie that she wants to see on the weekend and Danny can only nod and stare at her blankly. He isn’t sure where to look at her, with her brightly patterned dress and shirt combination, and her big eyes, all inquisitive and warm, so in turn, it causes the rest of his senses to muddle in the interim. He realizes, to his horror, her voice has risen with a question, and her head is cocked in anticipation of his reply. His reply to a question that he didn’t hear and could possibly be ANYTHING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. She’s a stream of consciousness talker.

Somehow he ends up with her number programmed into his cell phone, that she wrangles out of his lab coat’s pocket _on her own_ and he quickly understands that boundaries and personal space and tentative first impressions are not a thing with Dr. Mindy Lahiri.

They eat lunch together daily from that day forward. Danny barely even minds it, and in fact, begins to expect it. Maybe even look forward to it. Mindy likes most of the delis that he likes, and she’ll try anything once, as long as it’s not overly healthy. It doesn’t take long for them to automatically wander toward the elevator at 1 p.m., wordlessly entering and heading out to explore the neighborhood for their latest lunch find. They talk about nothing, usually television shows that Mindy wants Danny to watch, but he flatly refuses, and movies that they’ve seen on the weekends. Danny goes alone, while Christina is out of town, and Mindy goes on dates, usually with a different man each week. Sometimes, Mindy will let Danny sit in silence for upwards of five minutes, just to allow him time to decompress. He likes their lunches, and their new little office friendship, and it makes him worry less about his marriage, and why Christina is only calling every few days while she's gone.

Christina comes back from Thailand, and a few days and one perfunctory fuck later, takes off for the Netherlands for another month long project. Danny feels like she’s barely through baggage claim before she leaves again. She doesn’t even unpack.

* * *

 

Danny is meeting with a patient when his phone buzzes loudly in his pocket announcing the arrival of a text message. He doesn’t remember programming his phone to alert him to texts, but then again, he doesn’t remember receiving texts.

_**First world problem: my hair keeps getting caught in the sequins in the back of my dress. Mayday!** _

Thirty five seconds later:

_**Mayday means Mayday, pal. Rescue me from my glittery prison.** _

_**Please.** _

_**Please.** _

He can’t very well stop mid-Pap Smear, but he isn’t terribly surprised when three minutes after he sits back down in his office, a distraught Mindy barges through his door, her head bent back at an odd angle. “What part of HELP ME don’t you understand, Castellano?”

Danny hops up, assisting her in detaching herself from the grabby sequins on her body hugging dress. He stares at the length of her neck briefly, considering its softness. Her hair smells like lilacs and he has to physically shake off the feeling that he'd like to bury his nose in it, “You’re free. What are you gonna do now?” He pats her chastely on the back instead.

“Disneyworld, and probably solve the budget crisis.” She perches on the edge of his desk, like she wants to have a meaningful conversation. He tries not to look at her legs. Christina’s been gone close to a month, and he’s getting to that talk-to-the-plants-after-he-masturbates-in-the-shower vibe. “Your wife is beautiful.”

Danny looks up, puzzled, and realizes that Mindy is looking at the wedding photo that sits on his desk, “Thank you.”

“Why do guys always say _thank you_ when someone compliments their significant other? It’s not like you made her in your basement, or ordered her from a catalog.”

“Would you rather I sock you in the gut? _Thank you_ seems to be a pretty innocuous response.”

“Are you guys happy?” Mindy rolls her neck on her shoulders, presumably un-kinking the kink that her trapped hair caused. “You look really happy in that picture.”  She leans over him to get closer to the photo, and brushes her breasts across his shoulder.  He shivers involuntarily.

“We were pretty drunk there, but yeah, we’re mostly happy.” Danny doesn’t see the sense in telling Mindy that he thought he was happy, until he realized that he wasn’t, and it was pretty recently that even happened.

“Good. I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m this close,” She holds up her index finger and thumb to demonstrate, “to finding the man of my dreams, and I hope that we can be just as happy as you and Christina.”

He almost says, Be careful what you wish for, but thinks better of it. “I hope so too, Min.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Did you just call me Min?”

“No.”

“Yeah, you did, Dan.” She smiles, and he ignores the strange thump in his chest, “I swear, sometimes I think you get weirder on purpose."  She hops down off the desk and grabs him by the hand, attempting to pull him out of his chair, "Should we get sushi today? I have a craving for a California roll for some reason.” He goes with her, because it's after one, and he really, really wants to.

After work, Danny walks straight to St. Francis Cathedral, and waits his turn in one of the long,wooden pews.  There is something soothing about the low lights of the church, and he can almost feel the tension releasing in his shoulders and back as he sits and waits.  When the previous tenant vacates the small booth, Danny takes his place.

"Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  My last Confession was about two or three weeks ago."  He takes a deep breath,  "I think I'm falling in love with someone who isn't my wife."


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The middle: shit is starting to get real.

Danny finishes his Act of Contrition, completing his penance. He begins his walk home from the church, even though he could probably hail a cab, as he is easily several miles from home.  Walking helps him think, and thinking is just about the only thing he is sure that he is able to do, and that’s still at about a fifty-fifty chance. The words of the priest echo in his brain, bouncing off images of his wedding day, intermingled with glimpses of a dark haired, dark eyed, beautiful intruder. He knows, down in his heretofore reliable gut, that he is greatly and deeply fucked. And not even the good kind.

“Bury it, Daniel. You have to bury those feelings. You made a promise to your wife, and to God, that you were going to spend the rest of your life with her. You need to end the relationship with your co-worker. She is a distraction and a temptation that you cannot afford to allow to remain in your life. If it means you find another practice, or you move to New Jersey, you do it. For the health and well being of your marriage. And your relationship with God.”

He can’t help but wonder what Christina needs to do to ensure the health and well being of their marriage, but he imagines that she probably doesn’t have to stop flirting with the pretty Indian doctor in her office. But maybe she could stop abandoning him every time the phone rings, though.

Danny shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, sweating in the muggy late June air, already oppressive so soon in the season, and threatening rain. He tries to imagine how a conversation about this would even go with Mindy; what words would he choose, how he would explain in fifty words or less that he can't try new shawarma places with her anymore because he's married and he wants things from her that he shouldn't want.

He isn't surprised when, five blocks from his apartment, there is a great _boom_ of thunder and the sky breaks open, unleashing a torrential downpour.  He doesn't even pick up his pace.  This is his baptism and he has sins to wash away. 

He finds his apartment blazing with light when he returns, and initially, he's concerned that a wasteful burglar has entered his home. He tightens his grip on his cell phone, ready to dial 911 and run like hell when a mostly familiar figure appears in a fluffy blue robe, blonde hair wet around her face. “Danny! You’re home!” Christina practically flings herself into his slightly less confused arms, fluttering kisses on his face and neck. He closes his eyes.  _What is happening right now._

“Christina.” Danny isn’t sure what hocus pocus St. Anthony worked after he lit those candles down in the shrine, but it almost feels like his wife is home. She seems softer, and more pliable than she has in a long time. “I missed you.” And he has. For at least the last five minutes. He’s missed the Christina that he married, the one with the flowing hair, and the shy smile, for at least the last three years.

She starts talking about her work, and the Dutch landscapes, and the food and the people, and Danny almost forgets that he just confessed to his priest that he is in love with his co-worker.

His phone beeps loudly twice, and Christina looks puzzled, “You have a data plan?”

Danny shrugs. _Who knew?_ He knows that there is only one person who texts him regularly and briefly he fears how incriminating it may look to his wife. Christina is watching him like he’s just walked on the moon, as mystified and bewildered as she is about him finally embracing some degree of technology. “Of course I do.” He mumbles, sliding the volume down on his phone and slipping it back into his pocket.  

A few minutes later, phone buzzes again, three times in quick succession.  Danny presses the 'off' button with a new determination as Christina straddles him with her long, lean legs, hovering over his lap. Out of instinct, and because, breasts, he buries his face in her cleavage and lets out a low moan. _I am so fucking screwed._  

“Danny! Danny!  You had better be a rotting corpse right now!”  He's not sure how it's possible, but Mindy's voice sounds higher when it's bleated through a door. 

Belatedly, Danny remembers that he’d said something to Mindy on the way out about calling her later that night, and even more belatedly, he remembers how many text messages had gone unreturned in the past twenty minutes.

Christina rolls off of him, pulling her robe closed, her face converting back to its eternal countenance of a precise mixture of pissed off and bored. “Who the hell is that?”

Danny bites his lip, and considers his options. Nope, slightly deranged new colleague is still his best bet. “It’s my co-worker. She’s kind of,” Wonderful, amazing, available, present, “Excitable.”

“Are you going to open the door so she can bring her excitement inside or let her wake up Mr. Timmerman and have him call the cops again?”

Danny hopes to hell that his face isn’t betraying his true feelings; if he even knew what they were himself. He unlocks the front door.  “Min.”

Mindy pushes past the entry, her hair wet and matted to her face, mascara everywhere from running in the rain.  She's dressed in owl patterned pajama shorts and a strangely glittery t-shirt, and sneakers without socks. She grabs his head in both of her hands, turning it, and inspecting him for defects, “What year is it? Who is the President? What is your middle name, and don’t lie, I know what it is.”  She looks half crazed, but he knows that half of that crazy is worry, and his stomach does a little flip because of it. 

“Mindy, I’m fine.” Danny shakes her loose, eyes darting back to his wife, who remains, with closed off posture, on the arm of the sofa. “Christina’s home.” He half whispers, half hisses, and he realizes that he is the only person in the room who has any idea how conflicted he actually is. He feels ridiculous.  "I'm not dead."

"Thank God.  Who doesn't respond to text messages?  I thought...never mind what I thought." She switches gears, "I can't believe I finally get to meet the illustrious Christina!"  Mindy practically knocks Danny over to offer Christina her hand.  "I have heard so much about you.  This one never stops bragging about his fancy photographer wife.  I'm Mindy, by the way, I work with Danny. I don't usually look like a drowned rat.  I am way hotter on the reg." 

Danny doesn't know where to put his eyes or his hands or his entire being so he settles for running to get Mindy a towel.  "Hey, thanks for checking on me, and I will see you in the office tomorrow.  In a very collegial setting.  Platonically.  Doing work related things."

Mindy and Christina both give him strange looks.  

After supplying his concerned co-worker with an umbrella, and practically pulling a muscle attempting to be nonchalant, Danny is able to shove Mindy back out the door.  Christina gives him a long, hard look.

"I think Mindy’s your work wife."  Her tone is light, and teasing, and the grim line of her mouth diminishes into a smile.  "Danny has a work wife."  She sing songs.

"I don’t have a work wife."

"It’s okay, Danny, you can talk to other women. I’m glad you have someone to entertain you at work. You've always been such a loner, I was worried that you'd never come out of your shell. She seems sweet.  A little batty, but sweet."  Christina pulls at his t-shirt, and kisses his earlobe.

"You're not mad?"

"Danny, I don’t care. Be friends with her."  She pulls away for a moment, her blue eyes darkening just enough to be ominous, "But know who you’re coming home to."

After Christina is safely asleep, Danny turns his phone back on:

 

_**911, Castellano, You’ve Got Mail is on HBO tonight** _

_**Call me, let’s get dinner.** _

_**Are you dead?** _

 

_**Did you slip, fall, and hit your head on that stupid Yankees bench? I will murder you if you are dead. Who will let me eat their French fries at lunch?** _

 

**_I'm sorry I told you that you were old but who the hell eats Shredded Wheat?  Old people.  But I don't want that to be the last thing I ever said to you._ **

 

_**I’m coming over to find your lifeless body. Don’t move.** _

 

_**Text me and tell me you're not dead.  I can't lose you, Castellano.** _

He sends her a quick text in reply, way too far after the fact:

**Sorry about tonight.  Thanks for checking up on me.  I can't lose you, either.**

* * *

 

_Sometimes the person that gives us the most spark isn’t necessarily the one we spend the rest of our lives with._

 

"Stupid fortune cookie."  Danny mutters as he pitches the cookie and the slip of paper into the garbage can.  Mindy looks up from her lo mein noodles.  

"Why are you angry with your very dry dessert cookie?  I mean, I get it, but....did you at least put "in bed" on the end of that fortune?" 

"Mind your own business." 

Mindy chews wordlessly as she watches him. 

"I'm sorry." 

"I know, Danny."  She gives him a sad, sweet smile that absolutely destroys him, just in the flick of her lips. 

After she leaves, Danny fishes the fortune out of his trash can and tucks it into his wallet.

 

* * *

 

Because he's Danny Castellano, and Danny Castellano is not great with keeping conflict internal, it comes out in the strangest of places.

"What the actual fuck, Mindy?!?!"  He bellows, causing a passing nurse to crane her neck to observe the fall out.

“Involuntary manscaping is not a crime, Danny!”

“It is when I’m asleep!”

“No court in the land would convict me if they saw the caterpillars you were attempting to cultivate.” She hisses, trying to shield their colleagues from the wrath of Danny’s irritation.

“They’re my eyebrows, Mindy, they’re not subject to your jurisdiction!”  He wishes this wasn't the second time in as many weeks that he's awoken from a nap on the doctor's lounge couch to find a tweezers-wielding co-worker floating over him.  He groans and flips over, so that he is sitting up.  "Stop it!  It hurts and it is a violation of my personal space.  Not to mention, I do not want them arched like a super villain, no matter how much you try to convince me that's a thing."  His anger coalesces into more of a teasing tone, mostly because she's giving him the wide, doe _Did I do that?_ eyes that he really cannot resist.  He hates her sometimes for those. 

"I'm only trying to save you from yourself, you know.  If you have a bat in the cave, I'm there.  Barndoor is open, I'm there.  Eyebrows threatening to take over your face and eat your gorgeous eyelashes, I'm there.  Work with me here, Castellano."  Her face looms closer, and he has a hard time not looking at her lips.

Over the course of the summer, Danny has invented a game only he knows that he is playing; he calls it:   _How Close Can You Get_ , and he participates in it as often as possible.  He’ll sit next to Mindy on the couch in the lounge, and line up his shoulder with hers; never connecting, but always within millimeters.   If they stand at the reception desk, or ride the elevator, he positions himself with the nearest proximity to whatever part of her is most available.  Shoulders are easier than legs, kneecaps are medium speed;  hands are hardest of all. He wants to touch her, at all times, wherever he can, but he knows he can’t, so he does the next best thing. He imagines it, and then berates himself. 

He goes home at night to Christina, who sometimes is only barely there herself, and prays for the strength to do the right thing.  He's drifting into what will hopefully become a good night's sleep, when Christina rolls over.

"G'night, Chris,"  He leans in to kiss her, even though he's worried that even his kisses are starting to taste like lies.

"Why does she know your middle name?"

_The jig is up._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 


	3. Chapter Three

He can explain away the middle name; to a degree.

He has a driver’s license, a nosy co-worker; she has access to his social security card when she gets too close to his HR file on Jeremy’s desk, bribery, a lost bet, it slipped…he can explain it all away if he wants. 

He mutters about all of the above, and she's softly snoring again before he can even finish his list.  Christina rolls back over, apparently only firing a warning shot.  She wants him to know that she knows, but she doesn't want the details.  It fits her pattern.

He doesn’t sleep, because he doesn’t feel like he deserves it.

He isn’t the kind of person who cheats, not explicitly or implicitly. He isn’t the kind of person who makes his wife suspicious about his goings on because he has no goings on. He isn’t going to be the person whose name he avoids, like Voldemort, because he doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of turning out like him.  He isn’t going to be the Danny Castellano shaped bullet hole in someone else’s heart.

Christina is the person that he comes home to, he knows, but it's just he's struggling more and more to want to come home.

Danny develops the world's first (un)documented case of selective facial blindness. It manifests with a slow onset, because after hours and days and weeks of looking at his co-worker, he cannot recognize his own wife’s face.  She's shapes and colors and nothing that seems familiar anymore. 

He’s falling apart, and no one is coming to pick him up.

* * *

 

Danny is composing a highly professional and mostly un-condescending email about shift changes when Mindy enters his office, wearing a tweed mini-skirt and patterned tights.  He is aroused in more than two ways.  She asks him about recommending an ablation to one of her patients and when she exits, Danny realizes that he's typed _shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck fuck fuck_ into the body of his email just as he is about to hit _send._   

 

* * *

 

Mindy stabs a fingernail, freshly adorned with some sort of glittery silver polka dotted polish, into the side of his neck. “Do you have more of these?” He jumps about twelve feet into the air. She’s breaking all the rules of _How Close Can You Get_. He’d call a foul if she knew what the hell he was talking about.

“Necks? No, just the one.”  

“God, Danny, not necks. Moles.”  Like he's the problem in this conversation.

He shrugs, “I dunno, I guess. I don’t sit up nights counting them.”

“You should. Melanoma can be fatal.” She rubs her finger over his new found (to her) mole, drawing her face inches from his. Her feet are curled up under her, and she’s still in her scrubs and glasses. This is his favorite Mindy, all studious and doctorly and entertained by the strangest things.

“Thank God I’m surrounded by doctors.” He expects his next words to come out at a normal volume, but instead they sort of scrape out against his vocal chords. “What’re you doing, Mindy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She still hasn’t moved her finger, and she is now the official loser of _How Close Can You Get_. As if there were winners.

“This…us…” His hands do that over-enunciating, wide gesticulating thing that they are known to do in situations of woe and also joy and most other situations, really.

“Oh boy.” Mindy lets loose a sigh of epic proportions and Danny knows in his _bones_ he has it all wrong. He is exactly wrong for wanting to throw away a five year marriage for a girl who has a penchant for getting handsy and eating lunch and being distracted during work hours. That isn’t love, that’s friendship. She just wants to be friends. The signs; he's been reading them backward.  _Dead End.  Do Not Pass.  Wrong Way._

“I just started following Monica Lewinsky on Twitter. I cannot be your Monica. People do not stop tweeting at her about semen. Please do not do that to me.” She moves her hand, and the electricity ceases to pulsate through his neck and down to his abdomen.

Danny wants her hand back. He wants his “us” back. “I wasn’t suggesting…” He doesn’t know what he was suggesting. Truly. If he did, he wouldn’t feel like such a dick.  "Shit."  He leans his head back and closes his eyes and rubs his hand down his face.  He is a one man wrecking ball. 

"It doesn't have to be weird."  Mindy says in a small voice, untucking herself and standing to leave. 

It is totally weird.

* * *

 

Bits of Christina begin to disappear little by little. A shirt there, a bottle of shampoo, a hair brush, a pair of shoes; they seem to be migrating out of the apartment at a steady rate.  She works on her latest installation at a gallery downtown, and spends nights in her studio.  Danny brings her dinner after his shifts at the hospital, and watches her work.  He has a vacancy in his friend tier, and he's attempting to fill it with his wife.  Mindy and her stupid tiers.  He wouldn't even know he needed one if it weren't for her.

Happiness used to be a blonde haired woman resting her head on his stomach while they laid like star fish on their king sized bed, reading the newspaper, and listening to Bob Dylan.  Now happiness is harder to put his finger on, like he got up to go into the next room but forgot what he even wanted in the first place.  

He wanted someone else.

He finds the letter, the letter that offers Christina a position on a London based news magazine, as he's cleaning, and sees that it's dated for weeks before.  

"Were you going to mention this?"  He waves the offending paper in her face, and he knows that he's angrier than he has a right to be.  His heart pounds in his ears, and he sways a little on his feet.

"I was waiting for the right time."  She's working on her computer and Danny wants to slam his fist through the screen.  "This is clearly not the right time."

"Fuck no, it's not.  What do you think happens next, Christina?"  He can't control his volume, like he's stuck on _11._ Christina, on the other hand, calmly leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. 

He hates how she can stay so serene even when she's annihilating him.  

"We put this place on the market, pack up our stuff, and we move to London." 

He's frankly surprised at her choice of pronoun. "What? You want me to leave the practice, my mother, my _friends_ here to move across the OCEAN to….to be your house husband?"

"We’re married, Danny. I thought you could move to London and be my husband."  She's looking at him like she knew this would be his response, and she's gratified that she was right.  He realizes that her statement is more a challenge than anything else. 

"But I have a life here!"  He's pacing, and he hears the _thump_ of his own heart in his ears. "I grew up here. I thought I was going to die here."

Her eyes narrow. "You may still."

He doesn't stay to finish the fight, even though he started it.

* * *

 He's only been to Mindy's apartment a handful of times; the last for a random party she threw for Candy Month (which he looked up and was actually in existence, but God forbid Mindy celebrate a normal thing that people have actually _heard_ of) when Christina was traveling.  He suffered through some madman's fever dream version of _Willy Wonka_ and drank some sweet and fruity alcoholic concoction that she found on Pinterest that tasted exactly like his grandmother used to smell after she went to the beauty parlor.  Mindy was tipsy that night, and she sat on Jeremy's lap once or twice, and Danny pretended not to notice his own fist clenching involuntarily.  But he ended up staying to help clean up, and they talked into the wee hours (he may be able to pinpoint this as the night that she learned his middle name, and probably a whole host of other niggling secrets that he'd been packing into his small frame and carrying like kindling, just waiting for the right fire to throw them into), and even though she hated sunrises, they watched it together on her fire escape.  He was useless for days afterward, but he didn't remotely mind.

She opens the door, dressed in a clingy purple dress and her hair and make up are evening ready, but she's barefoot and it seems like she's settling in for the night.  "Hey, Danny.  What're you doing here?"  She doesn't look all that surprised to see him, but maybe she's used to emotionally stunted dudes showing up unannounced at her door, like she's a shelter for the wayward and lovelorn.

"I don't know where I'm supposed to be."  She backs up to allow him entry, and he hopes that didn't sound as pathetic and desperate as he felt saying it. 

"Do you want some coffee?  It's terrible."  She gestures to the machine that is already whirring on her counter. 

He nods, and reconsiders.  "Do you have something stronger?"

"Like, you want to take the varnish off your doors or you want to forget your name?"

"Whichever." 

She reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses.  "I'm fresh out of limes,"  Mindy apologizes, and pours the liquor into the shot glasses.  "Bottoms up!" 

The tequila burns all the way down, and he does another shot.  They stand, facing one another over the kitchen island, neither one quite knowing where to put their eyes.

"I wasn't interrupting anything, was I?"  He momentarily fears a date hiding in the closet or taking a bathroom break.

"Not at all.  I got home a little while ago."  It seems like it was years ago that he embarrassed himself in the lounge, but it's only been weeks, and Mindy and Danny have worked out a pattern of semi-avoidance/semi-faux-nonchalance that has worked for them up until now.  They'll eat lunch together, but walk to the deli in silence.  Danny wants to crawl out of his skin, usually, mid-way through the trip. 

"Christina wants us to move to London."

"Oh boy." She sighs, and he gets a little pinch in his chest.  "But you don't want to?"

He shakes his head.  "I do not.  But I'm thinking that my choices are limited."

She shifts her weight from foot to foot, and then hops up on the counter, sitting next to his splayed hands.  He measures about one and a half inches of distance between her hips and his pinky finger.  "Can we just, can we just forget that dumb thing I said about Monica Lewinsky?  Just, zero it out?  Take it out of the universe?"

Danny nods, and swallows.  Their faces are close enough that he can see bits of her mascara caking in the corner of her eye, and he absent-mindedly reaches to wipe it away.  She never takes her eyes off of his, and it is equally unnerving and perfect.  "I'd like that."

"I don't want you to move to London."

"Two to one, I stay."  Danny smiles ruefully. 

"I don't think it works that way."  Her dress is climbing up her thighs and she hitches it down self-consciously.  They didn't used to be like this, all weird stares and awkward breaths.  Even the worst versions of themselves were better than this odd strained silence they keep having. 

He had never wanted to kiss her more.

Mindy leans over, jostling Danny enough to knock him slightly off balance, and they're almost nose to nose.  "Just so you know, you deserve better than this." Her breath is liquory and tart.  He is finally winning a round of _How Close,_ by hundredths of a millimeter.

"Than what?"  He couldn't imagine deserving better than the person sitting right in front of him, even if she didn't belong to him in the least. 

"Danny."  He knows that he's not misreading her signs now ( _Go)_ , but he also knows that he still has a ring on his finger and no amount of penance could undo what he's thinking about doing.  "I'm glad you came over."

So is he.

 

* * *

 

"Say something awful, Danny.  You know you want to."  Christina hasn't been back to their apartment in three days, not since he found the job offer, and from her stance and her general mood, she's been gearing up for whatever she is about to do.

He mentally scans for the worst thing that he can think of, "I. Give. Up."

Christina looks momentarily wounded, but she's always been a feral animal of a fighter.  "Just like a Castellano."

"Hey, I'm not the Incredible Disappearing Wife."  If he goes down, he's going down swinging. 

"Who's disappearing now?"

"Are we really having this discussion?  Christina, you got a job in another country and NEVER MENTIONED IT.  I fucking win."

"We can discuss your chippy if you'd like."

He's never been good with simmering rage; he likes it to erupt in equal intervals.  Danny is a regular Mt. Vesuvius of rage.   "THERE IS NO ONE ELSE.  This is me and you, and oceans of fucking nothing.  This is me and you and years of you just giving me...nothing." Danny's head pounds with his rushing blood. 

"I don't know what you want from me.  You were always like the husband I never had."  Her voice is viciously sweet.

She's great at below the belt action.  Always has been.  "Fuck.  You."  Danny sits down on the edge of the sofa, then pops back up.  Three years of dating; five years of marriage. And he can't figure out anything that he could have done any differently.  He'd spent all that time trying to convince himself that his life was the one he deserved, that he didn't need more than what they had.  "You need to leave.  Or I need to leave. One of us needs to go.  Before we both do something we regret."

There's a moment that something passes over Christina's face, something that makes her look less brittle, or less hard.  A passing flicker of acknowledgement, like she's finally seeing his face after all this time.   He almost recognizes her again.  It's over as quickly as it began, and he wonders if he made her this way.  "We can still fix it.  We move away from here, and we get a fresh start, and we aren't chained to the hospital schedule anymore...it could be so much better.  For both of us."

"I don't know, Chris, I really don't."  Danny shrugs, and he wonders how it took him eight years. 

* * *

 

"I don’t think I’m ready for you to move to London and turn into Jeremy."  Danny hasn't seen much of Mindy since their tequila induced weirdness-detente, but she bounds into his office without knocking after he finishes with his last patient of the day.

"Me neither."  He looks at her, puzzled, file folder aloft over his messenger bag, "Why would I turn into Jeremy?"

"I don’t know. England is how he got to be the way he is. I assume it’ll do the same to you."

"I think I have a heartier constitution than--" Danny pauses, "I don’t know if it matters, because I’m not sure I’m going."

"Really?"  If he didn't know better, he'd think she looks relieved.

He continues, because he's enjoying the sly smile that's spreading across her face,"I don’t know if I can refer to cookies as biscuits. That may not be a concession I’m willing to make."

"What are you saying?"

"I’m saying that I don’t know if I can uproot everything to move to London."

"What about your wife? Doesn’t she want to?"

"I won’t stand in her way."

"You’re going to do long distance then?"

Danny shrugs. "I don’t think she wants that."

"You’re speaking very cryptically, Danny. What is going on?"

"I think we’re splitting up." Saying it out loud for the first time to someone who wasn’t Christina makes it feel real. Soul crushingly, marriage failingly real.

"Oh, Danny." She looks truly sorry. 

"I’m not ready to not be in New York."

"New York is what broke you up? I didn’t think you were that attached to the city." She looks to be mentally calculating what proportion of Danny's adult identity was _New Yorker_. "Okay, you basically _are_ New York. But you guys---"

"I think that, after time, we both saw that it wasn’t working and this seems like a good time to make…the transition."

"How are you talking about this like it’s a term paper? It’s your marriage. Save your marriage."

"Maybe I don’t want to save my marriage."

Mindy looks at him sideways. "That doesn’t sound like you.  You don't believe in divorce.  Or failure.  Or things that aren't perfectly ordered and just the way you like them.  And with your dad--"

"The fact that you know that, Min,"  He notices that she's starting to tear up, and he wonders if he's failing at this too, until she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him.  Her lips are soft, and smooth, and slippery with her lip gloss, but she tastes like cinnamon.  His hands wander down to her bottom, because he's been watching it walk away for months and now he can finally catch it.

She pulls away, and he runs his thumb across her cheekbone, "Just so you know, I would have written you hella fantastic letters if you had moved. We’re talking Hemingway style."

"I know you would have, Min."

"Also, for the record,"  She pauses,  "I, I live for the way you look at me. I don’t ever want you to stop looking at me like that."

"I like looking at you." His voice drops, "Wait, you noticed?"

"How could I not notice? You’ve been drilling me with smoldery sex eyes for months." 

"I’m going to hell."   

"I won’t let them take you."

 

 


End file.
